The Last Breath of a Once Proud Art

In 1820, Ralph Waldo Emerson was in the exact same position as five students will be tonight--vying for the honor of a Boylston Prize in Elocution.

The future poet and essayist only took second place in the competition, perhaps indicative of the high standards students were once held to for elocution.

In Emerson's days, Harvard overseers mandated that students spend two years in a course that combined rhetoric and moral philosophy. The Boylston Prize, established in 1817, provided a competitive atmosphere for students to hone their skills.

This year, only about twenty people competed for this once-illustrious honor.

"There was a time when the prize and the contest fit in very well with courses of study. Now it is seen as a rather separate event related to what students do in theater or debate or presentations of study at the IOP," says English Professor James Engell, who administers the prize.

The prize was endowed by Ward Nicolas Boylston in honor of his uncle, Nicolas Boylston, who himself established the Professorship of Rhetoric and Oratory in 1772.

Awarded for the "delivery of memorized selections from English, Greek or Latin literature," it is open only to upperclass students.

The prize is one of the few dinosaurs of the rhetorical tradition that remains at Harvard. In a university rife with students preparing for careers that require public speaking, rhetoric's decline seems unwarranted to some.

Engell says it's a matter of "concern" that the university's focus is now primarily on the written, rather than the spoken word.

"We aren't cultivating rhetoric and getting more people to do it," he says. "Public speaking is a very important skill to many professions, unless you are doing isolated forms of research."

According to Memorial Church Minister and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, who will also be judging the Boylston contest, rhetoric was given a more significant role in early American history. An eloquent man was also an educated man, he says.

"In the late 17th century in order to even get a degree, students would have to give a public disquisition open to any alumni member to critique," Gomes says.

Currently, the only rhetoric course taught at the University is Engell's the "Elements of Rhetoric." This course, first offered last spring, marked the first oratory course to be taught at Harvard since the 1968 retirement of Professor Frederick Clifton Packard, under whom the young John F. Kennedy '41 learned the art of elocution.

But there is evidence to show that some are unhappy with the current state of oratory on campus. Surveys by the Derek C. Bok Institute taken over the past 12 years indicate that the course alumni wish they had taken most while at Harvard was a course in public speaking.

Poor Speech

With only Engell's rhetoric course on campus, some professors and students worry that Harvard is not giving its students the preparation they need for the world outside the ivory tower.

"All we really have left that requires students to speak is the three speeches at commencement," Gomes says.

The result is a decline in the quality of speaking at Harvard and also throughout the nation.

"It's a great shame that we have no rhetoric requirement, for we are afflicted with nonsense all the time," says Gomes. "Rhetoric helps determine the difference between spin and substance and rhetorical truth from nonsense."

Hood, one of the Boylston contestants, faults the examples set by prominent public figures.

"There's nothing left of quick wit," Hood says. "There is eloquence lacking in public life. Just look at the presidential debates, for example."

And to Engell, the founder of the only rhetoric course at Harvard, the increasingly media-driven society has made rhetoric substantially more important in the past decades--a development that has not been reflected in Harvard's course requirements.

"There was a time when we thought we were going into a print culture in the late 19th and 20th century, but we are now ironically in an age of TV and electronic communication," Engell says.

Engell looks for the University to pay "more formal attention to rhetoric than it has in the last 40 years." Adding a core requirement would be difficult, though there is room for a greater emphasis on oratory, he says.

"My hope is that in the future, the University will once again pick up rhetoric and public speaking and add new courses. I think there is a skill to be learned that holds people in good stead and helps one with analysis as well," he adds.

At The Podium

As for the students who have entered the Boylston Prize contest, they agree that rhetoric has fallen in glory, but they say the Boylston Prize hasn't lost all its luster.

Contestant Nancy M. B. Poon '01, who performed a selection from Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House was drawn to the prize because of its connection to the University's past.

"It reflects a lot about the culture of Harvard school as a whole and Harvard tradition hundreds of years ago," she says.

Ross G. Douthat '01, who performed Shakespeare's Henry V's monologue before the Battle of Agincourt, echoed Poon's reflections on the dated nature of the prize. "It feels sort of like a fossil from a different age in a time where people took it much more seriously. Everyone [today] was competing on sort of the spur of the moment."

Despite the relatively small number of participants, the English department regards the prize as well-known among students.

"We do not in the Harvard curriculum offer the kind of systematic instruction in public speaking that was the case in the 19th century," says Marquand Professor of English Lawrence Buell. "But it is a popular prize with a standing and popularity on campus that's worth mention. There are typically quite a few dozen contestants."

About twenty students entered the contest with speeches ranging from Cato to Medieval Latin to Elizabethan drama to twentieth century English poetry and prose. Approximately half a dozen entries were in Latin, according to Engell. "There was quite a wide variety in all," Engell says.

For students who entered the contest, the prize offered a unique chance to practice declamation as well as to win money.

"I enjoy public speaking and I honestly haven't done anything public speaking or acting related n a while," says Douthet.

Fred Hood, another contestant, says, "I've done it before. Public speaking is a neglected art."